Mr. Johnson smiled again. "We soon showed them we weren"t leaving! Well, they sent a war party over. And I can tell you, we weren"t especially well armed then. All of them, we thought, had pistols in every pocket and a traveling armory of Kentucky rifles."
"Not to mention," exclaimed Mrs. Bush, "a bowie knife to scalp you with!"
"Well, they came over in a train of wagons and set up on the north side of the ravine there, and you could hear them from everywhere in town, shooting and shouting and cursing and threatening how they were going to "exterminate all the d- Yankee abolitionists that dared come into K.T." We listened to them all day, and then some more came late in the afternoon. Our tents were within range for them. Must have been a hundred or more. Whether they were going to shoot us out of drunkenness or out of intention, it would all amount to the same thing, and I tell you Dr. Robinson was deadly concerned. The carousing went on all evening. We sent over some representatives, to ask the meaning of their display, and they said that we all had to leave or we"d be cleared out and all that.... They got quiet about midnight-"
"When the whiskey ran out," a.s.serted Mrs. Bush.
"Then some more showed up about dawn, just screaming and yelling, so then there were about a hundred and fifty. Not long after that, they sent over what they called a formal notification that we were to take down our tents and pack up our things and get out of K.T. for good, and we had till ten a.m. to do it. At ten a.m., they would cross the ravine and do the job. So we drilled with what we had-sixty men or so, and some rifles. Well, ten a.m. came and went, and along about ten-thirty, we had another formal notification that they would give us another half hour and no more to pack up our tents. Of course, this one was more threatening-they would not hold themselves responsible for what might happen should we exhibit further resistance!"
"Pah!" Mrs. Bush almost spit, except that she held spitting in the extremest contempt. "They don"t hold themselves responsible for anything; that"s the whole trouble with them!"
Mr. Johnson allowed his little smile to grow larger. "You know, that hour went by, and then they formed up in military style and just stared at us across the ravine, and then one of them came along and said, "Ten more minutes, or the direst consequences will follow!" We were laughing! Dr. Robinson was laughing hardest of all, and you bet they could hear us over there, because they were cursing and yelling and shouting oaths, and screaming that we didn"t know the danger we were in!" He paused, and now Mrs. Bush smiled, knowing the last of it. "Toward dusk they just loaded up their wagons and moved off. Once night came on, they weren"t slow about it, either. You almost had to think that they were a little scared we would chase after them and do a little damage ourselves!" He finished with a shout of laughter, and Mrs. Bush and I joined in, especially Mrs. Bush, but then she got serious and said, "You can"t count on them all being cowards. If a party of them gets you alone out somewhere, on the California road or something, well." She shook her head. Yes, the Ruffians had been routed once, but it could go differently the next time. Mr. Johnson and Mrs. Bush fully agreed that there would be a next time. I agreed, too.
For I was all for Lawrence. None of my antecedents had come from New England-New York and New Jersey and I think Pennsylvania, places where life was slacker than it was in New England, were the states they all hailed from, and before that England itself and Halifax. They were not the sort to make a stand but the sort to go along. My sister Miriam had been considered very strange, and offensive, too, for purporting to live by her conscience. She stood accused of putting herself above the rest of us, adopting moral airs, even though she didn"t press any of my sisters on the subject and never even spoke of it unless she was asked. Merely doing what she did was flaunting enough for Harriet, Beatrice, and Alice, not to mention their husbands. I had often heard Harriet exclaim, "I don"t know why she brings these ideas into the family! You sit down to supper, and there"s ideas there; and then you get up in the morning and make the tea, and there"s ideas again. It makes you feel all outside of yourself, looking out the door of your own house, that you look out of a hundred times a day, but there"s ideas making it look all different. There"s no comfort in it, I"ll tell you that!" All the sisters agreed. What they disagreed about was whether she did it on purpose to annoy them, or whether she had simply been strange since childhood. Another thing all the sisters and all their husbands agreed upon was that even though Miriam might have considered herself better than the rest of them, this certainly wasn"t so. I had always liked Miriam the best, but not because of her ideas. I had always thought her livelier and sharper. And to tell the truth, she had always liked me. That was enough.
Alice would have the last word: "Miriam is an uncomfortable woman and was an uncomfortable little girl, and that"s just what she likes, taking your own hearth and home, that you"ve worked hard for, and making it just as uncomfortable for you as she can."
Following Miriam"s yearly visits to Quincy, a feature of every June, such conversations would go on for days. Then all of the sisters found a way to end the yearly visits. "She only does it out of obligation to Father," said Alice. "But Father doesn"t know her anymore, so..."
"So she might easily save herself the expense."
"Each year, one of us should go visit her, instead. We can easily afford it. We can be better sisters and better friends one at a time, anyway," said Beatrice, but although Miriam stopped coming, no one ever went to Yellow Springs to visit her. I suppose that her visits stopped when I was about twelve, and so when she died, I hadn"t seen her for eight years. I have to say of my sisters that they were sorry enough when they heard of her death. After that, all the discussion was pitying rather than vexed: if only poor Miriam had been prettier, she wouldn"t have wasted herself on such muddleheaded ideas but would have gotten a husband and some children to occupy her.
These thoughts reminded me to write my sisters.
September II, 1855 Dear Sisters: I am writing to let you know that Mr. Newton and I arrived safely in Lawrence, Kansas Territory, about five nights ago, after eight days traveling. We are now staying at the home of some friends of Mr. Newton"s from New England There was nothing I could tell my sisters about the architecture of the leaning house that would not excite and appall them, so I paused, then pa.s.sed over that subject.
named Jenkins. His name is Mr. John Jenkins, Vermont Street, Lawrence, K.T., and you may send me letters in his care for now. Mr. Newton and the other men in the company (well, not all of them, for there are some I haven"t met) are out at our claim putting up a cabin for the winter. I am in town, making purchases of provisions. I have bought two chairs, two pans, two buckets, some forks and spoons and tin plates, and additionally a stove and a horse. The stove is of the newest type. I will say that although not everything to be had in Quincy is to be had in K.T., what is here from the States is all of the newest sort, though sometimes a little worse for wear from the travel, and always, always very expensive. Horace would be amazed at what he could ask in price for the simplest piece of merchandise if he had a store in Lawrence. You may tell brother Roland that I have bought myself a horse that he would be proud of, who is "as smart as I am and twice as useful," as he used to say about Dolly. The weather is hot, and everything is fine. We made the trip in excellent health, though there were many, even most, who were not so lucky. The saddest story I have heard is about a man who camel out here with his wife and five-month-old baby, whose wagon broke down and whose baby died, and he had to carry the baby on foot to three Missouri towns, wrapped in a shawl, before he could find a coffinmaker to make a baby coffin, or a preacher to say a service. The wife didn"t see the husband for three weeks after the baby died, and stayed with strangers, waiting for him to return and grieving for her child. This happened to a woman who has been pointed out to me in the street. Of course, one wishes to say a word of comfort, but then that would reveal that she is the subject of gossip; even though it is gossip of the most sympathetic variety, it would be painful. I"ve heard many sad stories that people in the States simply would not believe. Everyone in Lawrence has a story.
But everyone in Lawrence is full of energy and enterprise, and I like it here very much. Soon I shall be writing you from our very own claim, on the river. Mr. Newton"s friends speak very highly of it.
Your affectionate sister, LYDIA.
Postscript: Please give my best to Frank, and say that I wish he were here with me to stroll down the streets of Lawrence and marvel at the sights.
And I did wish that, I really did.
After writing my letter, I rode Jeremiah through the streets of Lawrence and then up to the top of Mount Oread. The vista over the prairies from there was large and delightful. From a distance, I saw the much-discussed Mrs. Robinson. Many people said that for sheer singleness of purpose, Mrs. Robinson had her husband all beat. Later, both he and she became famous-he for being the governor of Kansas, and she for her writings. Although we didn"t speak, Mrs. Robinson gave me a friendly smile, and I watched her after she walked on. This encounter stuck in my mind, I must say, because very shortly-by the time I had gotten back to the corral and the leaning house-my confident notions about my health in Kansas became false. As I walked toward the tall, triangular end where the doorcloth hung, the whole thing seemed to swell to vastness, then shrink to glittering smallness. When I pulled aside the doorcloth, the interior seemed pitch black. I could see nothing, and I felt a vapor of perspiration start from every part of my body at once. Then I fell down.
Many settlers in Kansas fell into such fevers and, if they returned to themselves ever again, did not do so for many weeks. My fancy, however, throughout my fever, was that Mrs. Robinson was walking toward me, and that it was she who was the doctor, not her husband. It was my fixed belief that when she got to me, she would say something, and I would be cured of my fever. She came closer and closer, always with that friendly, self-a.s.sured smile, the "Kansas smile," I called it in my dream. And then she did approach the bed, and then she did speak, though I couldn"t decipher the words, and then I woke up, feeling weak but lucid. The woman beside the bed was Mrs. Jenkins, holding a basin of broth and a spoon. I said, "What did you say?" and she said, "Mr. Newton should be back today," and by that I knew that I had been in my fever for only two days. There was much speculation as to what it might be-typhoid? bilious fever? a case of the ague? Mrs. Jenkins said, "Well, my dear, it"s pa.s.sed off so quickly that we didn"t have a good chance to look at it."
I was a real pioneer now, for in those days it seemed that everyone was sick with the fever or the ague more often than not. Susannah Jenkins could have stood for a portrait of the typical settler of Kansas Territory. Her face was pale and sallow-looking from the ague, even though her shaking days were only one in three and she wasn"t as bad as some on those days. People said it was the land itself-it was so rich that when a man first plowed it up, it sent off a miasma that made everyone ill. Sickness was just the price settlers had to pay for the good things that would come later. There was much nursing back and forth. Every woman got plenty of practice nursing strange men who were sometimes so sick that they couldn"t say who they were or who their friends and relatives were. All of the women I knew had cared for at least one man who died unknown and whose fate friends back in the States would forever wonder about. Some of these men were boys, really, younger than I was by three or four years. Mrs. Bush, who was a great believer in Spiritualism, always tried to persuade us that they would come to their mothers somehow, but even so, it was wrenching to see them dying, to hear them cry out, and, worst of all, to be thanked and loved and called "Mama," when those who really loved them were a thousand miles away. Mrs. Bush said that surely the Missourians had no hearts at all if they could look on such suffering, "the true face of Death," and then go to lynching, shooting, hanging, scalping, and clearing out. "There"s enough suffering in this country already," she exclaimed, "and they want to make more!" I told her I thought it was deplorable. We were getting to be good friends.
I was still weak from my fever when Thomas returned. That, I think, is why I didn"t actually recognize, him at first. Also, he was wearing K.T. clothes now-blue trousers, a blue shirt, a red neckerchief, and a large - brimmed soft hat. I, of course, looked different, too, no longer quite the tall, strong girl that I had been when he left. I saw that we looked at each other, for just a moment, in the speculative way that strangers do, and that that moment was followed, for each of us, by a moment of shock: She my choice? He my choice? I realized just then that for all our plans and travels, I had somehow expected Thomas to bring Boston to me, not to lose Boston in the west. I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep for a few moments. When I opened them, he was sitting beside me, his hat off, holding the basin of broth that Mrs. Jenkins insisted was to be the sole element of my convalescent diet. I could smell the fresh corncakes cooking across the room.
Thomas said, "My dear, our cabin is rather humble. There was no window gla.s.s to be had, and the floor is only partially planked, but I like the claim, for both convenience and fertility."
I said, "Did they tell you I bought you a horse?"
He nodded. "An extremely fine horse. A horse from Missouri."
I sat up. "Who told you that? I don"t know where he"s from. The man had a string of horses, all for sale."
"I saw the horse. We may be sure that he"s a horse from Missouri and that he"s used to elegant work." He looked at me steadily. "But at any rate, he"s ours, and we need a horse. Jenkins was generous with his mule when we were building the cabin, but that can"t last."
"I should have bought a mule."
Thomas c.o.c.ked his head, and for the first time I saw that amused look I remembered from before. He said, "Mrs. Newton, you were not moved to buy a mule."
"His name is Jeremiah.""
I told him about the stove, the buckets, the forks, the pans, the plates, and the chairs. He told me about the river, the soil, the planking, and the cow a neighbor of ours planned to give him when, one of these days, he gave up and went back to Indiana. At the end of all this discussion, I had taken the broth. A bit later, my husband slipped me a hot corncake.
Later that evening, I listened to them talking about the Kansas Weekly Tribune. While I was down, the editor, Mr. Speer, had published a defiance of the gag laws, on page three, all in large black type, with words like "Now we DO a.s.sERT and we declare that PERSONS HAVE NOT THE RIGHT TO HOLD SLAVES IN THIS TERRITORY," and coming out for freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Everyone in the room, all our friends, were warm in their praise of Mr. Speer, and all had bought copies, for keeping and using to paper the walls of our dwellings.
My fever meant that we put off our departure from the Jenkinses" house for two extra days. On the second night, another family from the east-a man named Holmes, his wife, who was Mrs. Jenkins"s cousin, and their small children-came to stay with us. We now had a crowd of fifteen or more, but that was K.T. for you, as Mrs. Bush would say. In the emigrating season-that is, spring and early summer-you might find fifty in one house.
The great topic of conversation was that just the night before, the new governor of the territory, Shannon, the very man who had been feted and celebrated by the Missourians in Westport around the time of our arrival in K.T., had pa.s.sed through Lawrence and gone on, after only just looking in at the Cincinnati House, where the contagion had pa.s.sed. Two or three citizens went to him and urged him to stay for the night and meet some of the people of Lawrence, but he had declined them in no uncertain terms, for the sake of traveling convenience! He elected to spend the night in Franklin or thereabout, rather than in the largest town, the only real town, in K.T. Everyone said that he had no time for Lawrence but that he proposed to spend his Sunday, the next day, with a slaveholder who lived at the Shawnee mission school.
The indignation of our friends knew no bounds. Shannon"s sentiments were clear and his want of manly qualities, according to the few who had caught sight of him, evident in his person. "Shambling Shannon" was what Mr. Bush named him. He was a tall, rough, undistinguished man, red-faced, red-nosed, clearly a man both sound on the goose question and equally sound on the highly rectified whiskey question. Mr. Bush and Mr. Jenkins were horrified but not surprised, for it was their firm belief that the stealing of the Kansas elections by the slave power in Missouri and everything that had happened since, including the departure of Governor Reeder, who had been inclined toward the Free Staters, expressed a policy that had been colluded in, and even devised by, the Pierce administration, which was, Mr. Bush said, in the thrall of Jefferson Davis and all the rest of them. No one knew what hold these southern men had over the President and his advisers, but, said Mr. Bush, whatever it was, it was a powerful one. "The lawlessness," declared Mr. Jenkins on our last evening in the leaning house, "runs right to the top."
Mr. Holmes, fresh from Boston and the same age as myself, though with two children already, said the same conviction was rampant in New England. "Every man of sense says so. They made up their grand plan in "48, when they couldn"t get Texas in as six states but only one."
Mr. Bush responded, "First there was the Fugitive Slave Act, then they repealed the Missouri Compromise. Then they stole the elections here, made up a government as quickly as they could, and recognized themselves. Here we are. Our sentiments are against the law now, and our officials are preparing to subdue us. We may wonder if Shambling Shannon ignored us out of enmity or shame or policy, but it all amounts to the same thing. It doesn"t take a genius to know what they"re doing."
"And there"re more of them than us in every office in Washington, D.C.," said Thomas.
There was a long pause while everyone considered this.
"We"ll have our own territorial government in a day or two," said Mr. Bisket, who planned to attend the convention in Topeka that was to take place three days later.
"Evil people must spread their evil everywhere," said Mrs. Holmes, who was considerably older than her husband. "Scripture is absolutely clear on that. That is the nature of Satan. I"ve seen it already, and I"ve been in the west only a few days. Evil is all around us."
Mr. Jenkins said, "All I say is that it"s a plan concocted by men. I won"t say what motivates them to do it. Pure greed, most likely."
Susannah Jenkins looked at me and lifted her eyebrows slightly. I knew she was thinking of Mr. Stringfellow"s remarks about the real purpose of slavery, but I ventured to say, "My brother-in-law Roland back in Quincy always says, "No man"s going to roll over on his back and let eight hundred dollars" worth of property walk off, or eight thousand, or eighty thousand." "
Mrs. Holmes glared at me. "They have trafficked in human souls!"
I said, "Well, he said it, only. He didn"t own any slaves himself." I defended him, but really, to these citizens of Lawrence, Roland Brereton looked, walked, and talked just like the Missourians. I knew he was a kindly man himself, covering generosity with bl.u.s.ter, but nevertheless, two things happened at one time-I defended him in front of the Holmeses, but I felt my affection for him shrink and harden.
Thomas cleared his throat. "My wife"s brother-in-law is a down-to-earth and practical man." He made this remark without giving away his own sentiments. At least to me. Mrs. Holmes sniffed.
I felt that the Holmeses brought tension into what had previously been a congenial and welcoming group. When Mrs. Holmes then turned away from me, I sensed that I had been found morally wanting. I felt torn between trying to please her with some conciliatory remark and trying to return the insult. Mrs. Jenkins served tea, and Mr. Jenkins returned to his favorite theme of the slave power"s step-by-step plan for making slavery legal everywhere in the United States, but our pleasant group felt chilled and uncongenial, and when Thomas and Mr. Bisket and I left in the morning, Jeremiah and Mr. Bisket"s horse together pulling Mr. Bisket"s wagon, I was happy enough to go.
Mr. Bisket was to spend the night with us on our new homestead, then ride his horse to Topeka, returning after the convention to work around his own claim, which was about half a mile from ours. As he was to be riding his horse, I didn"t understand how he would be able to take along the box of "harness" that I saw had been loaded into the wagon. When Thomas went with me to get water for the horses, I said, "We"re not leaving all of the "harness" in Lawrence, then? I thought they were divided up."
He shook his head, and I waited for more, but nothing was forthcoming. My husband"s intentions continued to be a mystery to me that I dared not plumb. I would have said then that I loved him as a wife should do, that he was kind to me, and that I felt no desire to be secretive myself. Indeed, whenever I felt that I was revealing something about myself to him that others, for example my sisters, might have disapproved of, it was clear to me that he did not disapprove at all but was, in fact, approving, pleased, and even amused. But he afforded me no answering self-revelation. In Illinois, this had seemed to be simply his nature-not secretive but laconic. In K.T, it seemed to be his design-not merely laconic but conspiratorial. I estimated that of the twelve Sharps rifles, we still had six with us.
CHAPTER 9.
I Begin Life on Our Claim [image]Unless a parlor is in constant use, it is best to sweep it only once a week, and at other times use a whisk-broom and dust-pan. When a parlor with handsome furniture is to be swept, cover the sofas, centre table, piano, books, and mantelpiece, with old cottons, kept for the purpose. Remove the rugs, and shake them, and clean the jambs, hearth, and fire-furniture. Then sweep the room, moving every article. Dust the furniture, with a dust-brush and a piece of old silk. A painter"s brush should be kept, to remove dust from ledges and crevices. The dust-cloths should be often shaken and washed, or else they will soil the walls and furniture when they are used. Dust ornaments, and fine books, with feather brushes, kept for the purpose. -p. 306 WHAT NEEDS TO BE SAID about our cabin? Thomas and his friends were neither builders nor joiners. It was a western cabin, neither so primitive as some nor so comfortable as others, twelve by twelve, built of green logs, c.h.i.n.ked with twigs and mud that it would be my job to maintain, no window gla.s.s yet, not much floor, but a good chimney, a large hearth, an actual door in the doorway. The roof was not quite finished-the ridgepoles were laid and about a third of the shakes were laid across it. Over the rest was, Thomas explained to me, a sail, or rather, a large piece of sailcloth from Thomas"s father"s factory in Ma.s.sachusetts. As we approached from the south, we saw the sail roof shining like a white pearl on the sunlit prairie. And inside the cabin, the sun through the sail lit everything up.
Since we had left the Jenkinses" house before dawn, we arrived at our claim well before noon. After unloading the wagon, Thomas and Mr. Bisket set about splitting shakes for the roof. Mr. Bisket said that we couldn"t count on this weather for long, as weather in Kansas was both changeable and dramatic. The sail would have to be replaced as soon as possible. One of my best memories of K.T. is of those few early days in our cabin, with the high prairie sun shining through the white sail roof as I arranged our belongings and set up our household.
The two men split shakes until deep twilight. The plan was that Thomas would climb upon the roof the next day and begin setting them between the ridgepoles and the weight poles that were presently holding the sailcloth in place. I spent the afternoon getting water from the river, which was low and sluggish but not actually green as yet, and fetching firewood from Mr. Jenkins"s woodlot, which was about a quarter mile distant. I used Mr. Bisket"s wagon for this, hitching up Jeremiah by himself and then walking alongside him so that he wouldn"t have to pull my weight in addition to the weight of the wagon and the firewood. I stopped frequently to sit down or to at least lean my head against Jeremiah"s neck... I was still weak from my fever, but of course, illness was the normal condition of many people in K.T, and those who had lived there four or six months were strong on the theme that weaklings may complain that they have no silver forks or silken coverlets, but real settlers "make do, do without, and do it anyway."
For supper, we ate a pile of cold corncakes that Mrs. Bush had sent along with us, some cold bacon, and apples and peaches from Stearns"s store that Mrs. Jenkins had purchased as a special gift for us. We also had tea, which was well boiled over the first fire I built in our new hearth, and the flavor of the tea nearly masked the flavor of the river water. We were too tired to talk, and as Mr. Bisket would be leaving before dawn, we lay down early on the blankets and quilts we had spread over the floor. Mr. Bisket offered to sleep outside in his wagon, as it was a clear night, but Thomas wouldn"t hear of such a thing. The two men fell asleep at once-I could hear them snoring. Above me, the white sail was blue with moonlight and rippling and snapping in the perennial Kansas breeze, as a sail should do. Our cabin smelled new, both woodsy and earthy. There were plenty of c.h.i.n.ks where the mud and twigs had fallen away, and the moonlight was visible between the logs, but on a mild night like this one, such a thing was more pleasant than not. Here I was, weak and possibly a little feverish from the day"s work, lying on a rough floor, my quilt wrapped tightly about me to fend off the mice and other vermin that would be abroad as soon as I fell asleep. And my enemies were out there, men who would like to "clear out" my cabin and its Ma.s.sachusetts sail. Had my sisters known that this would be my destination when they sent me off, they might have had a second thought or two (maybe not). But as I fell asleep, I thought that my home was good enough for me.
We now entered upon a period of relative solitude, the first of our month-old marriage. I say relative, because there was no real solitude in K.T. So many families were coming into the territory, or leaving, or setting up house, or building, or doing business, or trying to make a small trade or a large one, or developing a claim, or challenging a claim, or, for that matter, making and breaking political alliances, that someone was at your door every day, or even spending the night. Even so, we ate many meals by ourselves and spent many nights alone. There was, of course, no planting to be done so late in the season, but once we had completed the roof, then Thomas commenced splitting rails for a fence and building Jeremiah a pen. The cow, if it came, would graze the prairie at will, and one of my jobs would be to pen her in with Jeremiah at night and let her out in the morning. After that, we began digging a well. In all of these endeavors, once I had more or less recovered from my fever, I worked as well as my husband. The other thing I did was to hunt game with one of the Sharps carbines from the box in the cabin. It was a breech loader-I had always used an old muzzle loader of Roland"s. I have to say that there was nothing in Miss Beecher about hunting game over the prairie. Nor had I ever shot anything myself except a jar or a large vegetable propped on the fence behind Roland Brereton"s cow pasture. And the Sharps carbine was rather different from my brother-in-law"s long hunting rifles. It was soon apparent to me, for example, that the rapid-loading feature of the rifle had no use in bird hunting-one shot had to kill the feathered creature, or it was gone. A slower or more numerous quarry was what the Sharps carbine was intended for. But I got a few turkeys. What I would do was scout about during the day, looking for the spots in the trees where the turkeys were roosting, then I would come back at night, if there was a little moonlight, and find the turkeys and shoot one. Prairie chickens, which were hard to shoot and easy to snare, formed the main meat in our diet. We soon learned from our neighbors to eat the legs and wings and dry the b.r.e.a.s.t.s for winter. I would say to my own credit that we ate meat almost every day, and to the credit of Miss Beecher that it was cooked in a palatable fashion most of the time. Of course there were corncakes and mush and corn pudding and corn on the cob and then more mush and corncakes and corn pudding and corn on the cob. But I also found walnuts in Mr. Jenkins"s woodlot, and hickory nuts and hazelnuts, along with some sour grapes and wild plums. A man on his way west paid for a night with us with two pumpkins. We dried the flesh and saved the seeds.
We chopped wood "just to be safe," though we were confident the winter ahead would be mild and sunny, with only enough snow for a picturesque effect.
We built ourselves a bed, strung with ropes. Once the roof was up and the sail came down, I used part of it to make a bed tick stuffed with prairie gra.s.s that I gathered. I stuffed pillows with the feathers of the birds I killed and plucked. I wouldn"t say that any of these efforts were easy for a woman of my limited skills, but throughout the end of September and into October, the one thing that we seemed to have a supply of was time. There were no errands, no engagements. Our tasks were right at hand, and we did them. Many times it seemed that just when I was perplexed about how to do something, a knock would come, and someone making his way over the prairie, or eager to talk or trade, would be standing there, and that person would know just what to do to spit a chicken or keep off the ants or preserve wild plums or paste newspapers over the walls. And of course, Miss Beecher"s book was always at my elbow. Thomas knew someone who knew a cousin of the Beechers. We marveled at the coincidence. I congratulated myself on my choice of a husband.
The only other male I had been alone with for any time at all in the course of my life was my cousin Frank, who was twelve years old and whom I had known since his babyhood. Once in a while, my father or one of my sisters" husbands and I found ourselves in a room together for a few moments, but in general, in Quincy and, as far as I knew, everywhere else in the world, men and women avoided one another"s company except in groups. It was thus a novelty and a surprising pleasure to find myself alone with Thomas morning, noon, and night. I could not help covertly watching him, trying to discover his ways and att.i.tudes. I drew a few conclusions. One was that he was not like most men I knew-he never put his feet up or tipped backwards in his chair. He neither wore his hat in the house nor threw it down when he came in, but always hung it neatly beside the door; nor did he smoke or chew tobacco and expectorate. He enjoyed reading. When I asked to look at his books, I saw volumes by Charles d.i.c.kens and William Thackeray and Anthony Trollope, as well as new books he"d brought from the east-a book by Mr. Th.o.r.eau, a book called Ten Nights in a Barroom and What I Saw There, Mrs. Stowe"s book (which many people owned and I had read parts of), and a poem by Mr. Longfellow called "The Song of Hiawatha." Some evenings, when no one was visiting, we would read parts of these and other books aloud. Thomas had a flat New England voice. I never read any of those authors later without hearing his voice in the telling of the story. Something I at first found disconcerting in Thomas was that he never offered an opinion until asked, and then his opinion flowed forth quickly and fluently, as if, I thought, he had been waiting for me to ask and that I had even been tardy in my asking. This sense that a life was being lived in my presence that was partly, or largely, unrevealed to me seemed eerie-the very hallmark of marriage. My sisters seemed to have learned to live with this other life by either ignoring it or dismissing it, which I attributed to their common lack of imagination. My aim was different-not a place to live with some children and a man you ignored as much as you could, but some sort of apprehension of him, out of which the other things would grow. That was what I called love. The mysteries of Thomas, who was awkward with tools but strong and persistent, who seemed never out of temper, who was less at ease with a rifle than I was and yet had brought along a large case of them, seemed like a treasure that it was my G.o.d-given task to explore. I watched for signs and clues. I wasn"t sure what my reward would be, but I was sure that it would be a delightful one.
Of course, we were eager to hear the news when Mr. Bisket returned from the Topeka convention, where the Free Staters were to frame a proper const.i.tution that would stand as a model against the "abomination," as Mrs. Bush and Mrs. Jenkins had called it, of the proslave const.i.tution. Much of interest had occurred, and one thing in particular that interested Thomas very much. I began to notice the name of a man called James, or Jim, Lane. Folks in Lawrence had talked about him, though not in the same way that they talked about Dr. Robinson, with respect and care. Mr. Lane later became a power in Kansas and, it was said, in the United States, for he was, or reported himself to be, a great friend of Mr. Lincoln. At any rate, people always talked about Jim Lane in the same way, from beginning to end: with some approval, some deploring, plenty of amazement, and a good deal of fascination. The fact was that he was born to be famous and was eager to a.s.sume his birthright. I had heard Mrs. Bush mention him in Lawrence. She didn"t like him and said that he had only gone Free State because he saw that that was where the future of Kansas was.
"But he saw that when few others did," said Mr. Jenkins. "Either it speaks well of him that he had the perspicacity, or it speaks well of us that we look like the coming party."
"Well," Mrs. Bush had said, "I won"t speak well of him no matter what."
This Mr. Lane figured in two interesting incidents at the Topeka convention. One was that he offered to fight a duel with Mr. Lowry when Mr. Lowry told some gossip about Mr. Lane and Mrs. Lindsay that had been going all around town already, anyway. The other was that Mr. Lane pressed and finally won the inclusion of a Black Law in the convention, for the purpose of excluding all Negroes, free or slave, from Kansas.
Thomas was astonished, but Mr. Bisket was not. He said, "You know, Tom, most folks think that if you look at it one way, well, they bring all sorts of problems with them, even when they don"t mean to. The problems just flock along after them, like Missourians. And then, well, a lot of folks were making one pretty good argument, I thought, and that was that you can"t make a party of abolitionists. Most people in the United States, at least outside of Ma.s.sachusetts and New York, they hate abolitionists. You see, they can"t call us abolitionists now, can they? Everybody was for it, for just that reason. Whatever we may think ourselves, we got to appeal to ones who don"t care all that much about slaves and slavery."
I thought this was a good, or at least a practial, argument myself I said, "And who"s to keep them out? There are all kinds of laws in Illinois that try to do this and that, amounting to the same thing. But no one enforces them. They just rea.s.sure people that they aren"t turning into New Englanders." I gave Thomas a sidelong glance and a smile. He smiled back at me, getting the joke in spite of himself.
"Anyway, Tom, when you hear Lane speak, he"ll draw you in just the same as everybody. Jenkins said he talked like the very devil, and it"s true, he does. Folks just stand there with their mouths hanging open."
Thomas didn"t smile at this, though, nor was he very friendly to Mr. Bisket for the rest of the evening, which meant, in consequence, that Mr. Bisket followed him around, trying to get him to laugh at his sketches of the men he met in Topeka, but finally he fell back on saying, "Well, you should have been there. I wanted you to go. There weren"t enough there who spoke out against this Black Law. You haven"t seen Jim Lane go like we did. When he goes, he goes like thunder." Finally, Mr. Bisket offered to sleep in his wagon, and Thomas, this time, didn"t stop him.
I realized when we lay down for our rest that he wasn"t extremely pleased with me, either, though he was, as always, kind and courteous. He said, mildly, "Mrs. Newton, you always speak up for these western men who have no principles."
"You mistake them if you think they have no principles-"
"Principles that are cruel and evil, then, and against Christian charity as well as righteousness."
"You sound like Mrs. Holmes seeing the work of Satan all around her."
We settled into our bed tick and pulled up the quilts, for though the days were still warm, the nights were getting cooler. He said, soberly, "I try not to see it that way, but I"m tempted. In what way is the system of slavery not evil incarnate? In what way do the slaveholders not argue like Satan himself, talking themselves and others into seeing good where none exists? They"ve been lying about it for so long that they believe their own lies."
"But it"s their concern. Slavery is their inst.i.tution and-"
"In Kansas, it"s our concern. And anyway, I knew free Negroes in Boston and Medford and on the ship. They were not men that deserved to be excluded."
"People like to be with their own kind. It"s more comfortable that way for everyone."
"There"s nowhere I"ve ever been where people may be with their own kind exclusively. And should I consider the Missourians to be my own kind? In what sense? A moral sense? A religious sense? Do they have the same habits as I do? Do they feel a regard for me? Or I for them?"
"Mr. Graves wasn"t so bad."
"Mr. Graves was willing enough to do a job for us, and entertaining in his way, but he himself said that when the fighting comes, he intends to stand back and watch. We may count on our friends only." He paused and glanced toward the door, then said, bitterly for him, "Some more than others, it appears."
My husband nestled down into the bed and pulled the quilts up to his face, as we always did. Even though our bed was on legs and off the ground, there was no telling about the vermin who would come in as soon as we slept.
But I did not want to let the subject drop. I sat up. "Are you saying that we must a.s.sociate only with those who think like us in every particular? I don"t know if the Black Law is good in itself or bad. I haven"t thought about it. But perhaps it"s a wise step for the very reason Mr. Bisket stated."
"So that the other side won"t call us black abolitionists? I am an abolitionist. I don"t mind being called what I am and am proud to be."
"Husband, you are in the west now, not in Boston. Don"t you realize that westerners hate abolitionists? Abolitionists are people who... who... who keep turning over rocks and making everyone else look at what"s under there or, worse, smell it and touch it. Abolitionists won"t let anyone alone. Westerners hate that."
"Men and women and children are being sold for profit. They are being beaten and killed, wrenched from their families. Women are being used for breeding, like horses, and their babies are sold away from them. Children are being raised with no sense of G.o.d or of their own humanity. People are being treated like animals every day. Every hour of every day!"
"Since I know you"ve never been in the south, I know that you are getting most of your information from books, and I saw Mrs. Stowe"s book in your case."
"Is the book wrong?"
"Surely not entirely wrong, but it"s a story-"
"If you doubt these things, then, my dear, I am surprised at your ignorance."
He said this mildly, signaling, I knew at once, that we had arrived at a significant moment in our young marriage, and perhaps in his estimation of me. I had been speaking with fervor but, let"s say, also with good humor, as if all the ground we were on was safe, solid, and well explored. It was not. I knew at once that all his kindness to me, and care of me, and interest in me, which I had come so quickly to rely upon and enjoy, would shift- not in quant.i.ty, because he was a kind man, but in quality, because he would see me in a new way and be disappointed. There was a proper answer here, and I had to give it. That I was glad to give it, I immediately realized, told me that I did love my husband, though I hardly knew him. I said, "I don"t doubt them. But I"ve never seen them."
He nodded his head slightly, acknowledging my reply.
"You should have asked my sisters. They would have told you I am disputatious."
"Disputatiousness, even in a woman, even in a wife, is not so unpleasing to me at all. Besides, every woman in Kansas is disputatious."
"Then I will continue and say what I detest about those Missourians is what they say of us, how they would restrict and injure us. What they do among themselves doesn"t... doesn"t inflame me in the same way."
We were silent for a few moments. I could tell that he was ready to distinguish between me and Mr. Bisket. I got down into the quilts and laid my head upon his shoulder. Soon after that, I understood that we had agreed to disagree.
CHAPTER 10.